


Lost Child

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert is a poor substitute for Dom, but right now, he's what I've got to work with. I've always been one to make the most of any situation, and this won't be any different.</p><p> </p><p>Written for the <a href="http://i-reversebang.livejournal.com">Reverse Bang,</a> with this <a href="http://lmeden.livejournal.com/125665.html">art prompt.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Child

He's a child.

Oh, he looks like a man and wears a man's clothes. He looks out at the world with a businessman's eyes, seeing everything as things to tabulate and make profit from, pluses and minuses to put into a ledger. Checks and balances. He doesn't have a heart in his chest, he has a calculator. It makes me wonder why Dom wants him so much, why Dom brought him this far. No, that's not entirely true; I know everything he knows, and I know what he's trying to do to this man. He wants to break him apart and put him back together, shaped differently on the inside, looking like the same calculating man on the outside.

Only, he's a child. He turns those big blue eyes at me, that mop of dark hair on his head. He's frightened, poor lamb, and he can't take his eyes off of me. His fear is a tangible thing, and I can feel it coiling around him. I can almost taste his heart, now that he can't count and calculate and bid for dollars. It's a shriveled thing, a child's heart, a child's simple wants and needs trapped inside of it. I can see it in his eyes, how lost he is, how needy he truly is.

He's delicious, this child, this boy in a man's skin. I want to run my fingers through his hair, hold him to my chest and feel his heart in my palm, watch it beat and ease the terror from his eyes. This world is mine, nothing to be scared of.

All right, that's a lie. But he doesn't need to know that.

He skitters away from me, but he fetches up against the house. "What is this place?" he asks, voice shaking.

I smile, all teeth and knowing eyes. "Robert," I say, reaching for him. "Take my hand."

The dark and ruined city lay beyond my home, and he glanced from my hand to the darkness beyond the yard. Hesitantly, he reached out for me. I hauled him to his feet, and he was solid and real in front of me. The real Robert, not a projection. The lost little boy who can't find his way home.

I want to plunge my hands inside his chest and take out his beating heart. I want to feast on his fear and blood and vain hope that everything would be all right. Silly boy. Nothing will be all right until Dom comes. He's supposed to be here, with me. This is where he belongs, at my side, in this place we built together. He'll keep his promises, even if I have to wrench them out of his soul. He _promised_ me, and he can't get away from those promises so easily.

Forcing myself to merely smooth his clothing, I continue to smile at Robert. "It's going to be all right," I tell him. "Do you know why?"

"No," he whispers, fear still etched across his features. I want to taste his skin, the glistening muscle beneath it, the cool vitreous jelly of his eyes. I want to feel the slick slide of his brain between my fingers, to see him come apart in my hands. I can build him back up, I can make him into something new. He can be my child in this darkness, the one I can present to Dom when he comes back. James and Phillipa are gone, grown and living in the city somewhere. It's dark and raining there, and they preferred to be out in the wide world. I let them go, because that's what mothers do. We raise our children, our _real_ children, and let them find their way. We guide and shape them, then let them make their own decisions. You don't hang onto them forever, longer than you should. It isn't healthy. It isn't right.

My smile isn't for Robert, but it calms him anyway. "Because we'll be together."

***

Robert moves through my home, taking everything in with large eyes. I have a hand on his shoulder, guiding him through the hallway. He's a lost child, even if he managed to stop shaking once we stepped onto the porch. This is my home, my place of power. I determine the rules here. I will show him the way.

He drinks the tea I make for him, and it serves to thaw him out a little. It's cold outside, raining. I know my children are safe in the wilderness of the city. I had taught them well; I only hope Dom knows what a good mother I've been in his absence. He ran from us, but I can't fault him too much for that. He's afraid. He has always been the one afraid of the unknown, afraid to take the next logical step. I was the one to bring him to the dreaming, to show him all that he could be. I was the one to push him to greatness, to turn his skills into a new field, to keep pushing him past his limits.

He's coming, I know he is. Dom can never stay far away from me. He loves me far too much to let me go, and on some level he knows he's wrong. This is our world. This is where we belong, and this is where he needs to stay. He needs to wake up. He needs me to show him the way back to the world we created, the real world where we belong. He's still sleeping, but I know that I can wake him up.

Robert is a poor substitute for Dom, but right now, he's what I've got to work with. I've always been one to make the most of any situation, and this won't be any different. That little girl isn't here, so there's nothing to distract me, no one to get rid of to get what I want.

I run my hands through Robert's hair as he sits in front of me. I quiet his startle, pushing him back down into a seated position. "Have you ever been in love, Robert?" I ask him, my hands kneading the tight muscles at his shoulders. He's still a frightened, lost child. He doesn't understand my question. I know instantly that he had lost his mother as a young child, because Dom knows this. I know everything Dom knows, because he doesn't know how to stop sharing things with me. He's too open, not careful enough; even that girl keeps coming back into his mind, diving deeper into his secrets than she should. Even secrets he knows he should keep, he has always shared them with me. He doesn't know how to turn me aside, doesn't know how to lock himself up tight.

I know that Robert is the same way. Robert is a young Dom, without someone to mold him and shape him into a man worthy of love.

"What does that have to do with anything?" he asks me, and I let go of his shoulders. They sag a little, and I know he misses my touch.

His blue eyes are bright, so bright as they track me around the kitchen. He doesn't know what to do, poor man. He's such a lost thing, and I need to show him the way.

"Do you know what it means to be a lover? To be half of a whole?"

He frowns at me, poor man. His fingers around the teacup are tight, knuckles white with tension. "Mal," he says, his voice like a sigh. "I don't know what you're talking about. What does this have to do with anything?"

"It's everything." There's a fire in my eyes, I know. There's tension in me now, too, and I know how I look when I start to get angry. I snap and spark, could even start fires with my mind. I could rip him apart with my bare hands; I don't need the knives on the kitchen counter, even if they make the blood spray so prettily when I draw it across skin just so. I've had practice with guns and with knives, and Robert starts to shiver in front of me. I place my hands over his, not soothing at all, and I make him look at me. "This is what you need to know. This is all that's worth having. This moment, this perfect moment. When you love someone so much you know them inside and out, when your souls lock together. When you can wait for a train, and you don't know where it's going, but it doesn't matter. Because you'll be together. Because that is what love is."

"I don't-" he begins. I know he's going to say _I don't understand._ Of course not. He's a lost thing, cast adrift in time and space, no one to bend and mold him into a better shape. No one to train him to be the man he should be.

I can do this. I've done it before, I can do it again.

"You've never been necessary, have you, Robert?" I ask, my voice lilting. He looks up at me, that same terror in his eyes. Poor child. Poor, poor child, so lost and alone. I need to save him. I need to show him the way to redemption.

My hands slide over his, grasping his arms. "You need to open your mind," I tell him, and I move to straddle him on the chair. He's frightened, so frightened. I don't even know what I must look like to him now. "I'll show you what it feels like to be a lover." I want to shake him, hurt him, break him. I want to rip him apart and slide blades into his throat until he chokes on his own blood. I want to show him pain, have him feel the nightmare that emptiness and solitary confinement can become. I want to show him the absence of love. He won't understand the light and joy that love can bring until he understands the dread darkness of its absence.

"Mal," he begins, licking his lips. "This isn't where I belong. This isn't where I'm supposed to be. I was at the hospital, and I had to open the safe..."

"Of course you did," I tell him, grasping his face with my hands. He has his hands on my waist, like he isn't sure what he's supposed to do. Does he shove me off? Does he pull me closer? Does he accept the lesson without a fight? I roll my hips over his and feel his body start to respond to me.

He's a child in a man's body. Of course it would do that, and it distracts him from his rising objections.

I smile at him, soft and sweet. "Robert," I begin in a chiding tone. "You've never been half of a whole. You've never been a lover. Let me show you. You need to feel what it is to love, to feel, to truly _be._ I can show you this, Robert." I place one of his hands over my breast, my eyes locked to his. I feel the power rise in me, intoxicating. He's weak. Robert had always followed others' direction. He's never had a mind of his own. Oh, poor lost child. I'll break you of that.

"Mal," he tries again, looking up at me helplessly. "I don't belong here."

"Of course you don't. You aren't going to stay." I grasp the hair at the nape of his neck and tug down sharply, making him look up at me as I roll my hips against him again. "You're a puppet, Robert. You aren't even a real boy. You haven't been necessary to living and breathing and loving. You haven't made a selfish choice in your life, have you? You've been the obedient son, the dutiful boy. The marionette." I twist my lips in the semblance of a smile as he shivers beneath me. I have him, I have him, he's _mine._ "What do you want, Robert? More than anything?"

I already know the answer, but I don't think he does. He looks confused, poor lost child.

"Love," he whispers, eyes sliding down from mine. They burn with shame and guilt, that as powerful as he thinks he should be, this one little word can still break him to pieces.

That's my weapon, and I know how to wield it well. I nearly shout with triumph at the way I have power over him, over Dom, over everything else in my world. This is where I rule. This is where I make the rules, where they all come back to me in the end.

"Come with me, Robert," I tell him, voice soft and sweet. I have his head pitched up to face me, and I grasp his throat with my other hand. My nails rake welts across the pale skin there, making him shiver. "Look at me, feel me. Open yourself up to me, Robert." I smile again, stretching my teeth. I feel as if they should be sharp and dangerous, like knives, like a shark's, ready to burrow into his throat to give me the hot rush of his blood. I want to burrow into his warmth and swallow him down, take away the rough edges and shape him up again into something new and wonderful and _mine._ "I'll make you half of a whole. I'll make you into a lover."

He has one hand on my breast, the other at my back. His touch is light and reverent, hesitant to do more. He won't take, he won't push. He will worship me with lips and eyes and touch, but he won't take. It had been brutally yanked out of him, leaving him wanting more but not knowing how to ask. "Mal," he whispers, shivering beneath me. "What do I have to do?"

And just like that, he gives himself over to me, just as I knew he would.

I cover his mouth with mine, gentle and soft, featherlight and only hinting at what more can bring. Subtle pressure, slight guidance and he opens his mouth beneath mine. I sweep my tongue against his lips, against his tongue. I taste him, the fright he had tried so hard to hide. I taste his confusion and terror and blind, ridiculous hope that I'll make it all okay, that someday he will realize that he truly had been loved, and that all his prior hopes hadn't been a lie.

He responds, moving and sliding beneath me, holding me close. I could push my fingers into the back of his skull; it isn't soft like a newborn's, but I can make it soft like that, push my fingers into the fontanelles I make and touch the pulsing brain inside. I could scoop out the bits that don't matter, put in the remnants of other people that I've molded. I can make him anew, something different, someone worthy of love and affection and respect. I can fill in the empty spaces in his head, fill the holes in his chest where his true heart should be. All he has is pounding muscle and grit, tendons and bone. He doesn't have a heart, but I can give him one. I can make him one.

"Open yourself to me," I whisper in his ear, my fingertips sliding down the opposite side of his neck. "Open your mind. Give me everything."

"How?" he asks me, still confused. He's humoring me. He is simply playing along, and my anger spikes into a wave of utter fury and rage.

I push at his chest and feel the plate of bone that's his sternum. He's screaming now, terror and pain and hopelessness as I rip the bone out and pull at the cage that his ribs make of his chest. I pull at the lungs and heart, I scrape the back of his chest wall and touch the spine. I rip and pull and scoop everything out of his chest cavity, and still he screams. Pale and broken, screaming and staring at me in confusion and horror.

He watches me as I lick the blood from my fingers, as it paints my lips crimson. Robert whimpers, blue eyes full of tears. "Why?" he asks, voice breaking. "How?"

"Robert. It didn't have to be literal," I chide him gently, as I did when Phillipa smacked me in frustration all those years ago when she was a toddler. "Your fear is blinding you to the truth. You think you know what's real. You think you know how things should be. You need to _listen,_ you need to let me show you." I straddle him again and place my hands inside his chest, touching the back of the chest wall, feeling the bump of rib and muscle there. "Can you feel me?"

"Y-yes," he stammers, eyes wide and nearly all white. Sheer terror. It can wipe a mind clean. It's a start, even if I had meant do this in a nicer way.

I run my nails across the bone, a light scrape that sets him whimpering in pain. "What do you feel, Robert?" I ask, voice gentle.

"I'm scared," he whispers, eyes welling up with tears. "I'm so scared."

"You're listening to me now, aren't you?" I ask him, and he nods helplessly. I scratch at the bones again. "I'll make you a heart, Robert. Your old one was diseased. Infected. You couldn't feel this before. It wasn't real to you. But now you're clean and new. Now you know how to feel."

He sobs, too terrified to touch me now. I kiss him again, soft and sweet, hinting at all that can happen between lovers. I taste the salt of his tears on his lips, and he can taste his heartsblood on mine. He whimpers, please please please _please_ and he doesn't know what he's praying for anymore. He doesn't know he's praying to me to fix him, to start his life over again once I'm done with him.

I take him to the floor, cradling him gently. He doesn't bat my hands away, just looks up at me in helplessness. Oh, yes. There it is. This is how it begins. I don't have to clean him out completely, then. He's willing to listen now, willing to start again. He didn't understand before, but he understands now.

I take the useless bits of flesh and gristle from my floor and start to reshape them so that they look like they're supposed to look. He watches me with large eyes and a soft moan escapes him when I straddle his waist and start going to work. He's helpless beneath me, but aroused as well. Look at how well you're doing, I almost say, but that would ruin my concentration for this task. Look at your new heart and lungs, look at how shining and perfect they are.

"You're ready now," I tell him as I close him back up. He's seamless and perfect, trembling beneath me. I stroke his skin tenderly, and lean down to kiss him again. He opens his mouth beneath mine instantly, no need to coax him into anything. He responds, sliding his hands into my hair, pulling me flush against him, mouth hungry as if he'd feed his soul from mine. "Yes," I whisper as he moves to kiss my jaw. "Robert, Robert," I croon, clutching him close to me. "Feel me, Robert. Listen to the heart beating in my chest. To be half of a whole means that you understand the heart from the inside out. It means that the breath you share with your other half is the same. It means that losing that other half leaves you empty, carves you out to the bone, leaves you locked in a cage of pain and grief and guilt, that all you have is darkness and misery. Love is the light, Robert. Love makes you worthy, makes you important, makes you do impossible things. Love is the only thing that matters. Without it, you're just a lost child fumbling in the dark looking for comfort."

"Mal," he whispers against my neck. He strips me bare for him, and his lips run over my skin.

He worships me with his mouth, suckling like a greedy child. I hold him against me, urging him on until his touch is fevered, as if he could consume me. "This," I whisper to him. "This is what you need."

I rock and buck against him, claw at him, break him open and smooth him back together again. He cries out in mingled pleasure and pain, as his mind rearranges everything he thinks he knows about love. He lays spent on my kitchen floor afterward, covered in all manner of fluids. Robert doesn't look when I lick it from his skin, savoring the tastes mingling together, when I smile against his chest and know he belongs to me.

He shivers when I let him dress, and he averts his eyes from mine. A child still, but growing into a man. His new heart will show him the way.

"Robert," I say, smiling broadly at him. He shudders beneath my touch, and I know his averted eyes mean that he must be reliving every last moment of my hands on and inside him, reshaping him, molding him into a proper lover. "You've done so very well."

"I... I need to go," he says, his voice breaking. I can taste unshed tears in his voice. I know he's about to cry, I know he's full of gratitude. Of course he is.

I stroke his hair. "Not just yet, Robert. You still have a role to play in this game."

My smile is sharp and full of teeth. He shivers and shies away from me, but I'm stronger than he is. It's nothing to push him down, to straddle him and take his face between my hands. "My darling is coming, Robert," I tell him. He's starting to cry as my fingers approach his eyes. He's scared, though I don't know what he could possibly be frightened of. I lean down and tip his face so it's easier for me to kiss his forehead. "Put your arms around me, dear," I tell him, and he complies instantly. "You understand what we have to do, don't you?"

Robert looks up at me with terror and adoration at once. Of course he does. "Mal, you can't leave me alone out there. You can't leave me like this."

His chest is a gaping hole again. "Have you undone my work?" I ask, careful to keep the rising rage out of my voice. He's already frightened enough.

He shakes his head as the blood fills his chest cavity and spills over the edges. "I'm not doing this. I don't understand what's happening."

He's unraveling at the edges, fraying, and I plunge my hands inside his chest. The heart is a misshapen thing, the molding falling apart. Well, I understand his fear now. I put him back together, thinking that the third time has to be the charm. He'll stay together this time. He'll stay whole enough for what I need. He'll be the child to keep Dom in line. He'll do what needs to be done. I stroke his hair, so soft and silky, and he relaxes somewhat even if there's still terror in his eyes. "You love me, don't you?" I ask him, and he nods rapidly, lips pressed tight together to keep from speaking. "You won't be alone for long, I promise."

I kiss him again, all over his face, all over his neck and chest. I'm sealing him shut, the knowledge and the need inside of him, part of him now. I put it deep, weaving it into him this time. He can't reject this truth. It will shape him, color all he sees, become the driving force for his ambition.

The world shifts ever so slightly. The skies are brighter outside, though I know they will darken soon enough.

Dom is here. He's coming for me, just as I knew he would.

"Mal," Robert whispers. "Don't leave me alone."

"Just remember, my darling Robert. Remember what it means to be a lover, to be worthy of the true love that can be between people." I kiss him again, long and deep, tasting the knowledge settling into him. "When you're a lover, when you're half of a whole, you're never truly alone."

I tie him up in knots and leave him on the porch. I tell him to be quiet, that everything will be all right as long as he's quiet and follows my directions. He sees blood on my hands, my clothing, the floor. He shivers and shakes, and I know he remembers all that I'm capable of. He listens to me, my lost child. He's growing up.

I clean the kitchen and change my clothes. Dom is coming, and I can wait. I'm very good at waiting. It's been a long time, but he's coming back to me so that we can live out our lives together. We'll grow old in our world, with our dreams and our children all around us. Robert will learn what it means by following our example. He won't be lost any longer.

Smiling, I get my kitchen ready for Dom. He's coming for me, and I'm ready for him. It will be perfect and it will be wonderful. I know Dom, after all. He's the other half of my whole, my lover and husband. We'll live out our lives together, and it will be everything I've ever dreamed.

"He loves me," I whisper in the empty kitchen. "He's always loved me."

Satisfied, I sit and wait.

The End


End file.
